U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks to members of the news media from the front steps at the main clubhouse at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, U.S., November 19, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar

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BERLIN (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve will hold U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to his word on preserving the central bank's independence, policymaker James Bullard told a German newspaper on Sunday.

"The transition team of the President-elect has said that it wants to protect the independence of the Fed," Bullard told Germany's Handelsblatt business daily.

He said he saw no need for big changes to the status of the U.S. central bank. "If inflation were at 15 percent like it was in the 1980s, there would perhaps be a reason to say that something isn't right and it has to be changed. But that is not the case today," he said, according to an extract of the interview in German.